Smashing the Molds—release the bad girl inside of you, discard the good girl straight jacket. Tell us how expectations can be turned inside out and upside down.
Spanning a life of drastic change in the women's movement and decades of civil unrest, Friedan lived the perfect suburban houswife's life as the decade of the 1960s began in Grandview-on-the-Hudson. It was there that her famous book, The Feminine Mystique, was born. Listed on NYU's 1999 “100 Examples of Best Journalism of the Century,” Friedan's book swept many a white upper middle-class woman out of her comfortable yet miserable existence at home and into the hard work world of the 1970s career woman.
My son was the child the people with perfect children talked about. I know what it feels like when other parents gossip about you and your “problem” child just out of earshot. It is hurtful when your child is the subject of adult gossip and commentary. You know they are calling him names, like “spoiled” and “brat,” or worse. The pain is piercing.
You could say I took a tumble for God that May morning. Dressed in standard white, my dress was pretty but modest enough for the occasion, which was my first Holy Communion. The petticoat underneath was stiff and scratchy and made my legs red. My headpiece looked like a halo or crown.